Francine Sawyer was always surprising, even shocking, usually irreverent and always entertaining.

That’s just who she was.

Tasked once with writing a newspaper story for the Jacksonville Daily News Easter Day edition, she posed this question to a Baptist pastor, “So, how did they get Jesus up and going?”

Assigned to take a telephone call from a Marine Corps general on deployment for a story updating the activities of a Marine Expeditionary Unit at sea she asked, “How do you get to be king general?”

And while writing a story about vandalism at Jacksonville High School, an incident that included a particularly vulgar passage of graffiti that, in a nutshell, stated that the principal at the time “sucks …” Francine casually asked the principal, “Well, is it true?”

Those are all things I actually heard Francine say in the newsroom of the Daily News. And it really only scratches the surface of a woman who didn’t have an unexpressed thought in her life. A woman who loved reporting news perhaps more than anyone I’ve ever known. A woman who called things as she saw them, no matter where the chips might fall or any collateral damage it might cause. The people she loved she almost loved too much. The people she hated she had no use for.

I’m lucky. my spouse Roselee was too. She loved us almost too much. The feeling was mutual.

I met Francine Sawyer 20 years ago. I know this because she started working as a cops reporter for the Daily News only a week or two before Hurricane Fran ripped through the coast in September of 1996. She covered that storm wearing a New York Yankees ballcap the entire time. I never once heard her express any interest in baseball since. Never saw the cap again either.

A photo of Francine from the 1970s. Note she’s using a Zippo lighter to check her eye makeup. Photo courtesy of Lee Barnes.

From the start I knew she was unusual. She was a veteran at covering cops. She had done so for years at a couple of newspapers – took a detour into TV reporting – then came back to newspapers. She wasn’t the best writer in the world. And she knew it. Fixing her copy was what editors were for, and she appreciated each and every one that made her look better. Even her mistakes were legendary. My longtime friend and colleague Robert Holland still laughs uproariously about a famous Francine typo. In a story about gasoline prices during the travel season she wrote, “It’ll cost more to pump Ethel this year.”

She was tremendous at developing sources, and could find out just about anything at any time. She always knew what was going on. If she didn’t know, she damn well knew how to find out. She had a reporter’s skeptical nature but understood when it was important to tamp it down. She chatted up people easily, had charm and knew when to use it and was among the most naturally curious people I ever met. There was no question she wouldn’t ask.

Francine might say anything at any time. One day the name of a famous TV news anchorman came up in the newsroom. “Oh, I did him once,” she said as if she were discussing plans for lunch. “He was drinking a lot back then.” When a particularly annoying advertising rep was in the vicinity she would walk through the newsroom and exclaim, “Joke man coming, don’t make eye contact!”

If she sounds like a crazy aunt, well, that’s because she sort of was, in the most endearing way. If the child of a co-worker came into the newsroom she scrambled to have a piece of candy at the ready. Once, when Aileen Streng brought her then-young son Jake into the newsroom, Francine couldn’t find any candy on her desk and eventually gave him a pack of ketchup. As she got older and her eyesight began to fail, the drive home from Jacksonville to New Bern became very tough for her. She drove slowly and if too many cars got behind her, she would pull over and let them pass before continuing. One night in December she pulled over and into a nativity scene in a family’s yard. She knocked on their door and said, “I’m terribly sorry but I crushed your little baby Jesus.”

Francine enjoyed being around competent people who worked hard. That’s what she liked most about newsrooms. She liked being in the know and telling people about it. One of her favorite things was coming up to me on a given day and exclaiming, “Ooo, oooo, you’re going to love this story …”

Francine paid me the highest compliment she could by naming her dog after me. She loved nothing more than her dogs and this one in particular. She called it “Baron Von Madison Taylor” because, as Francine said, “he has a perfectly shaped head just like you do.” It was a perfectly random thing for Francine to say

And when the baron died a couple of years ago after a long and full life, we shared a tear.

I hadn’t seen Francine in a few years but we kept in touch via Facebook. She had health problems related to diabetes and a heart condition. She dropped off Facebook for a while but retuned with gusto a couple of years ago. She posted frequently. We interacted often – and often about random things as was her nature. She was always great fun. Some might say she was a hoot – but I doubt Francine would like that description. Let’s just say that every time I heard from her, I felt special.

A few days ago she sent me a message with a link to a story about the future of journalism. She was always sending me and others stuff she thought we might find interesting. That was around Oct. 2 I think. That was the last thing I heard from her. Late Saturday night and early Sunday morning I found out via Facebook that Francine had passed away – suddenly. I didn’t see it coming, not at all.

But then again, Francine was always full of surprises.

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